Semyon Kirsanov

Semyon Isaakovich Kirsanov (Russian: Семён Исаакович Кирсанов; 18 September [O.S. 5 September] 1906 in Odesa – 10 December 1972 in Moscow) was a Soviet and Russian poet and journalist. Still in his teens, Kirsanov was the organizing force in his native Odesa in 1921 behind the Southern Association of Futurists. In 1925, Vladimir Mayakovsky published two of his poems in his Constructivist journal LEF, having met the younger poet on a visit to Odesa. Upon moving to Moscow the same year, Kirsanov began an apprenticeship with Mayakovsky and the poet Nikolai Aseyev and, in the public imagination, inherited his mentor's torch after Mayakovsky's death in 1930. For a more complete biography, see Maxim D. Schrayer's An Anthology of Jewish-Russian Literature, Vol. 1.